by
Dylan Vox, GayWired
It wasn’t a good day to be a gay entertainer on reality television as gay porn performer James Zinkand was evicted from Big Brother 9 and male stripper David Hernandez got the boot from the seventh season of American Idol. Much ado has been made about both contestants’ former career paths, and in the end, it cost one of them the chance to win the show.
On Big Brother: Till Death do us Part, it was announced last week that the couples were now spitting up and each individual would be playing the game for themselves. After much persistence and some dealing by under-the-radar player Shelia Kennedy, James was put up on the block and voted out by all of the remaining players except his former partner Chelsia Hart.
Zinkand entered the house as a straight man looking for love in the special matchmakers addition of Big Brother, but earlier this season Dirtyboyvideo.com revealed Zinkand's gay porn past when it began promoting videos of him on its home page.
CBS and Endemol Productions, who do extensive background checks on participants, have so far made no statements about the contestant’s interesting past, but news outlets have been spreading the story through cyberspace.
After his eviction, the players were revealed a new twist, and Zinkand came back into the game. After much insistence by host Julie Chen to “keep it clean”, James did drop the F-bomb at the end of the live show, which will no doubt draw another regulation violation fine for CBS.
On Idol the smooth voiced David Hernandez seemed like an early favorite with flawless vocals and a mellow sound, but club owner and Hernandez’s former boss Gordy Bryan informed the Associated Press that David had worked for several years at Dick’s Cabaret as a male stripper.
The shows producers seemed less concerned about Hernandez’s past telling TV Guide magazine, "We've had strippers on the show before…We're never judgmental about people who do things like that. If it were some sort of heavy porn, then maybe we'd have to take action. But certainly not on this."
In the end, however, America made the ultimate decision when they decided to keep wannabe country singer Kristy Lee Cook ,who gave a performance that show judge Simon Cowell called “horrendous”, over Hernandez in the first week of eliminations.
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Originally published on Thursday March 13, 2008.